


In His Image

by dearwhimsy



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Tony Feels, and yes that's apparently an official tag now. oh tony.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2012-10-14
Packaged: 2017-11-16 07:02:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dearwhimsy/pseuds/dearwhimsy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. ~ Oscar Wilde</p>
            </blockquote>





	In His Image

**Man hands on misery to man. 1**

Tony is twenty one and about to take over the legacy that his father had left behind. When he’s finally handed the keys to the kingdom, his PA (not Pepper but some random guy assigned to him by Obi) immediately drags him off to various photoshoots and interviews where he’s forced into stiff black suits and told to look dignified. Those images, along with the numerous paparrazi shots of him at the many events he is now required to attend (also in the same stiff black suits) end up splayed all over magazine covers and everywhere else.

A week after officially becoming CEO, the PA comes into Tony’s office and hands him a copy of the Forbes magazine hot off the presses, with him and Obi on the glossy cover. Tony wrinkles his nose a little at the picture and flips to the relevant article page while the PA chatters on about PR stuff. He doesn’t even finish skimming the first line – _looking every inch his father’s son…_ – before throwing it into the trashcan by his desk. The PA gapes at him speechless for a moment before frowning and starting to lecture Tony. Tony simply rolls his eyes and tunes him out.

He switches those stuffy old suits out for slick new ones that border on obnoxious and sometimes wears sneakers with them instead of nice leather shoes, ignoring the PA’s disapproving looks and the disdain of the old boys. He also picks up the habit of wearing shades when out and about and, to the dismay of his PA (new one, first one quit when he realized he had absolutely no sway over Tony at all), likes to insist on more ‘fun’ poses during photoshoots. Obi shakes his head at the picture of Tony on the cover of Rolling Stone but doesn’t bother wasting his breath because he _knows_ Tony like no one else does or ever will, part of the reason Tony honestly loves the guy.

He takes it as the semi-joke it is when he turns thirty and Obi gifts him with a framed set of all the magazine covers Tony’s ever graced including that first Forbes one that Tony never liked. There’s only twenty nine covers though so Obi hands him an old photo neatly framed to make it an even thirty to fit the occasion. Tony laughs and has them hung up in the living room.

Within a month, the framed magazine covers are replaced by a couple of Picasso’s that Pepper was practically drooling over. Tony doesn’t really see the appeal of them but if Pepper’s that hyped up over them then surely they’ve got to be worth something.

Obi visits afterwards and asks what Tony did with the gift. Tony shrugs and tells him that he hung them elsewhere. Like the bottom of a trashcan, he thinks to himself. Obi stares at him with a measured look as if he knows exactly what Tony did and why when Tony himself couldn’t say.

Rhodey comes by a couple days later and Tony lets him hang around in the workshop so the guy can ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ at Tony’s genius. Tony’s busy trying to fend off DUM-E’s attempts to shove a blender full of green mush at him and doesn’t notice Rhodey picking up the framed picture which had been face down on Tony’s desk. _Huh,_ he says, _you really are the mirror image of your dad_.

Tony strolls over and takes back the picture of him and his dad and places it back face down again on the desk. Rhodey raises an eyebrow but he knows Tony well enough to know not to push and simply follows when Tony proclaims he’s hungry so they’re getting pizza. Now.

Later, he steals back down while Rhodey’s asleep and screws the picture frame down in place on his desk. If Rhodey notices the change when he’s down in the lab again the next day, he wisely doesn’t comment.

 

**_Why is my reflection someone I don't know_** ** _?_** 2        

The Malibu mansion had come fully furnished, including various mirrors scattered about in the various rooms, hanging from the walls and such. Over time though, they disappear one by one.

On the day after his Christmas Day bash, the latest flavor of the week wanders into the bathroom the morning after and immediately walks back out again, asking a barely awake Tony before he could escape to the workshop where she could find a mirror. He opens his mouth to reply and blanks. That’s when Tony realizes there were no more mirrors left in his mansion.

When she’s finally shooed out the door, he wanders about his mansion and realizes something else. There are no reflective surfaces anywhere in the areas of his mansion that he regularly haunts. It unsettles him for reasons that he can’t define and _that_ makes Tony angry enough to drive to the nearest hardware store and pick up half a dozen mirrors and hang them up around the place as a sort of fuck you to his own pathetic nerves.

Couple days later, he comes off a twenty four hour engineering jag and drags himself to his bedroom where he sleeps like the dead. He finally stumbles out of bed at 2pm and goes to brush the absolutely disgusting taste out of his mouth. He shuffles over to the sink, eyes still blearily trying to blink open when he catches sight of someone familiar in front of him. Suddenly, the world around him tilts and reality blurs.

Sharp pain exploding across the knuckles of his right hand brings everything into focus again and he finds himself panting like he just ran a marathon and spider web cracks radiating from the center of his reflection on the mirror above the sink. His reflection, no one else’s, just his own.

He stares intently at the face in the mirror for hints that he was not himself and finds...disappointment. He takes a slow deep breath and carefully lets it out. Again and again until his racing heart finally gives up its desperate beat and his hands finally stop shaking long enough for him to grab a screwdriver and take down the cracked mirror which he throws into the cabinet under the sink.

He brushes his teeth and washes up and then makes a call to Pepper telling her to get someone to remove all the mirrors in his home. It’s an odd request but Tony’s made enough weird ass requests of her that this one barely fazes her.

Tony spends the next day or two or three (it’s all a bit of a blur after he passes the thirty fifth hour of no sleep) down in the workshop. When he emerges, the mirrors are all gone and Pepper’s waiting for him with coffee and a clean suit. He manages to lay a single sloppy thank you kiss on her cheek before she shoos him off to the bathroom to hurry up and clean up for the meeting.

As he’s toweling his hair dry, Tony thinks to check the cabinet under the sink and stares down at the plain cardboard back of the mirror that briefly hung over the sink. He hears Pepper shout for him impatiently; telling him to finish up already or she’s withholding the coffee. He closes the cabinet door gently and hurries to do Pepper’s bidding least he’s denied his precious caffeine.

The next time he brings a woman back, he escapes the moment she’s asleep and spends the night down in his lab instead. He sends Pepper a text to take care of things in the morning and drowns out the world with numbers and some good old AC/DC.

 

**_Do you know the big problem with a disguise, Mr. Holmes? However hard you try, it's always a self-portrait. 3_ **

He’s still in the suit, helmet in hand when he spots the letter from _Times_. He picks it up and waves away the robot arms trying to pull off the armor. He opens it clumsily with metal clad fingers and the picture inside falls onto the desk. The iconic gold and blood red gazes at him from it, unforgiving and resolute.

He remembers when the sketches had been made but had not realized they were already done. Pepper had raised her eyebrow at him when he’d showed up to the sitting for the artist in full armor, the expression on her face a classic one stating all the ways she found him ridiculous but that it wasn’t yet worth the trouble of trying to make him behave. Tony had wanted to kiss her, press smiling lips against that eloquently raised eyebrow but sadly she’d left early, but sadly she’d left in a hurry, claiming board meetings to get to.

The letter goes on for a while about what an inspiration Tony is, how heroic his actions, blah, blah. It’s typical the typical bullshit that they all spout even when it’s the furthest thing from the truth. He skips to the last paragraph where they ask him what name he wants them to print when they publish him on the cover as 2010’s Man of the Year.

_“…as Tony Stark or Iron Man?”_ it reads. Under which name should he be listed? Was this picture of the genius that built a hero or the hero born from genius? The world wants to know.

Tony stares at down at the words, and wonders at the answer. Who was he now, when all that he’d once thought himself to be, made himself into, was now buried with Yinsen and Obi in sand and metal?

He traces over the outline of the helmet and the need to see for himself itches beneath his skin. He jams the helmet back on and runs through the halls to his room, leaving behind broken tiles in his wake. Tony slams open the bathroom door and takes out the mirror still left in the cabinet under the sink. He holds it up in front of him and finds a broken image, nothing like the drawing he’d been sent, nothing like a hero.

Wasn’t he supposed to be fixed now? Hadn’t he been born anew in fire and suffering? As a hero, as someone better? As someone that _wasn’t him_?

His grip on the mirror’s frame tightens and tightens as he stares at the distortion of what he should have been until finally it shatters under the strain, spraying glass shards like shrapnel everywhere.

A hundred and one pieces throwing Iron Man’s image, _his_ _image,_ back at him from everywhere he looked. The colors of his armor catch on the sharp edges, like gold and blood framing his reflection, a twisted parody of a knight’s herald, and it _burns_ , a slow burn like banked embers that never quite quench.

It builds under his skin, a slow crawl in his veins that carries with it the familiar taste of scotch and something metallic and cloying sweet, tasting like disappointment and regret.

It just didn’t seem fair. That so much could have happened, that Tony could have changed so much and yet still remain the same disappointment that he’d always been. What would it take for him to finally escape himself? Or maybe he couldn’t…

Tony swallows hard. _No_ , he thinks, _no_. He stands up, glass tinkling down from him in a shower of flashing gold and red. He strides out of the room and heads towards his workshop, leaving behind the scattered remains of the broken reflection. _I won’t give up_ , he tells himself.

_I can’t_.

**Author's Note:**

> I was thinking of The Picture of Dorain Gray (also the source of the summary) when Tony feels interrupted and I ended up with the above. He just really gives me lots of feels, especially angsty ones. sigh.
> 
> The source of the quotations are as follows:
> 
> 1\. This Be The Verse (Philip Larkin)  
> 2\. Reflections (Mulan)  
> 3\. Irene Adler (Sherlock)
> 
> As always, comments and kudos are appreciated!


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